


[working title]

by apolliades



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cats, Coming of Age, Lowercase, M/M, Meet-Cute, POV Second Person, but slightly unconventional meet-cute, self indulgent gay emo nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 09:09:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9649208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/pseuds/apolliades
Summary: then again, you’ve never met a murderer. you’ve no idea what a murderer’s smile might look like.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't actually about murderers sorry if that's a let-down y'all. if you're reading then tysm for reading ily pls gimme feedback/attention/etc ily (written nov. 2016)

you move out at nineteen and you’re completely, completely fucking terrified. not good-terrified, not adrenaline fuelled rollercoaster ride terrified. not the moment before you step on stage and see the audience for the first time terrified. there’s no anticipation of some wonderful outcome to make it all worth while if you get it right. nothing like that, nah. just pure, unbridled, nasty, nightmare fear. 

because, fuck, you’re on your own. you’re on your own in a way you never really have been before, even though you’ve always been sort-of on your own. because nobody at school ever really liked you much and you live in such a small town and you never did get a job, so where else would you have met people? where else would you have made any fucking friends? 

but that was its own kind of alone, and this is new. it’s different, now, that you can’t put your face into your cat’s tummy to have a warm place to cry, or go sit in your sister’s bedroom when she’s at school and you just want to remind yourself that you aren’t the only person who inhabits this house and these walls. 

you have a job now, though, or technically you’ll have it, starting tomorrow. your aunt wrangled it for you, and it’s at a garden centre towards the outside of town. it means a twenty minute train ride in the morning and then a twenty minute walk, if you’re walking fast, but that’s okay. the pay is minimum wage, but that’s okay; you still have some sick pay saved up and it’s not like you spend it on much anyway, apart from train tickets and lunch. sometimes jumpers. 

god. your life sounds fucking pathetic, doesn’t it? 

your official job title is shop assistant, but because you’re still not quite okay enough to look people in the eye and smile, you’re only going to have to do behind the scenes stuff. back room stuff. shovelling compost, mostly, repotting plants, watering things, cleaning up. it sounds boring, and tiring, but that’s good. mind-numbing is good. it’ll be fine, you think, so long as you’re kept busy enough not to think about anything it’ll be perfect. the exercise will do you good anyway. 

and you get to be alone. that’s most of the point, actually. you get to be alone in the good way. the safe calm quiet peaceful way. you like that kind of alone. 

(at least, you tell yourself you do.)

the first night alone in your flat is bad. that’s really the only word there is for it. bad. just plain fucking bad. 

you’re too scared to sleep, even though alone here is different to alone there. there, the quiet was so thick and absolute it felt suffocating, and that was what scared you. here, the quiet is not really quiet at all but more like white noise, a flood of city ambience and ticking and electronic buzz and every other fucking sound makes you jump, every time you hear something new you think oh god, what if and have to switch the light on and lie there in the bright, terrified, gripping your phone in one hand and your x-acto knife in the other. white knuckles, heart going too fast. 

nothing ever happens, though. like always.

about a week into your garden centre shop assistant job, you manage to get your shifts changed so you’re working past closing, so you’re even less likely to see anyone. it’s pretty much entirely off the cards, in fact, because the only other people there so late are the cleaners, and they’re pretty much confined to indoors. 

you tell yourself this suits you. you tell yourself you like it this way. you tell yourself you like it best when you can just put your earphones in and knuckle down and get on with it, or what the fuck ever. you tell yourself that. you try your best not to question it. you try your best not to feel that cold twist in your chest when you see a gang of friends on their way home on the train looking happy. you try really hard to ignore the flush of loneliness and shame it makes you feel. 

(you feel it in your face, pink and hot and uncomfortable in your cheeks, prickly like sunburn. you feel it in your stomach, flip floppy sickness that makes it hard to eat. you feel it in your chest, dead centre, between your lungs, behind your ribs, like a tight fist. you feel it in your throat, rising like tears and stopping your mouth.

you ignore it.)

it’s not like you’re even really all that alone. really. you see your aunt almost every day. your one and only friend still texts you, most days. sometimes people leave comments on your blog posts. 

really, it’s not that bad. 

back to the fucking point, though. anyway.

(try to stay on track, kid. it’s not that hard.) 

about a week in, you’re out the back stacking bags of compost. they’re fucking heavy — your arms feel like they’re going to drop out of their sockets, your back feels like a large angry person has been stamping on your spine for several hours, your shirt feels too tight, constricting, trapping sweat between fabric and skin. it’s getting pretty dark, already, and the flickery floodlights make your head hurt, and there’s no one else still there so you take a break, slump down against your nice comfy compost bag pile, 

exhale. crack your spine. let your body adjust. try to ignore the aches and pains.

then someone hops over the fence. 

you sit up very very quickly, heart kickstarting into panic mode, yanking your hand out from under your shirt. 

it’s a boy, and he’s obviously seen you, because he’s stopped still with one leg hooked over the fence, one foot on the tin shed roof, half in half out. he looks just about as surprised to see you as you do to see him, although he doesn’t look fucking terrified, as you’re sure you do (then again, though, you never really showed much on your face, you’ve always wondered if that’s part of the reason why people don’t like you much, you look like a fucking robot almost all the time).

“oh,” he says. it’s a soft bright sound, making his mouth a circle. “oh,” and then, “fuck,” and then he climbs the rest of the way over the fence, but stays balanced on the tin roof. you’re pretty sure it’s not supposed to take the weight of a person. you don’t say so. you don’t say fucking anything. you stand there and just watch him; in the dim light you can’t make out much except that he’s a boy, and he’s taller than you, and he’s wearing a parka and, you think, a backpack.

“there isn’t usually anyone here this late,” he says, as if that’s a sufficient explanation for why he’s breaking into a fucking garden centre after dark. he stands there on the roof and looks (presumably) at you, taking in your uniform jersey embroidered with the garden centre logo, the dirt you’re no doubt covered with a faint dusting of. 

“can i, uh, can i come down?” he asks, when you don’t say anything. you can hear the sheepish grin in his voice when he says “it’s just that i don’t want to break the shed. or fall off and die.”

for a second you still don’t say anything. it’s always been a problem with you, saying the right thing at the right time, you always seem to miss your cue, come in too fast or take too long and either way it always seems fucking weird. 

“uh, okay,” you tell him, with words that don’t feel like your own (but they never do). 

he grins — you can tell, because the light glints off his teeth — and does so, jumping down off the roof so his coat flaps out behind him like batman’s bloody cape. suddenly you want to laugh. this is so fucking ridiculous that you want to laugh, even though you’re still so scared you can taste it, still scared something awful is going to happen, that he’s going to pull a knife (that would glint like his teeth did) and you’ll be found dead on the concrete on monday morning, or cut up and stuffed into the compost bags. christ, that would be fucking undignified. that would be fucking embarrassing. 

as his feet hit the ground, the boy makes a soft oof sound, dusts himself off, and then — he walks straight towards you. grinning, still. you think it could be called a disarming sort of grin, which is no doubt what he’s going for. you aren’t certain whether you feel disarmed. you aren’t actually certain what that feels like. 

as he gets closer, though, you shy away on instinct. you can’t help it — you’ve always felt slightly unwell, whenever you get too close to any boy whatsoever (which is inconvenient, because you actually would quite like to get close to boys, but, never fucking mind) because you always feel so much less. whenever one is close, you feel, it make the differences between you and him, whoever he may be, so much more cruelly, glaringly obvious. so much more inescapable, so much harder to put out of your mind. you always feel like they can tell. that you’re different. that you’re other.

 

- 

 

“i’m not gonna nick anything,” he pushes down his hood as he approaches, and now in the light you can see him, and now in the light you can ask yourself how do i compare? do i measure up? am i as good? am i as _boy_ as he is? 

he’s good-looking, because of course he is. how could he be anything else? boy climbs over the fence into your place of work in the night for no apparent reason, of course he has to be good looking. 

he’s the kind of good-looking you think would be described as boyishly handsome. more than that, actually — as you get a better look at him, with his hood down (though he’s wearing a beanie hat underneath it for some reason, in a colour… that’s not quite red, not quite purple, somewhere in between the two. burgundy? maroon?) and his ridiculous smile — he has nice teeth, straight and white but not obnoxiously hollywood bright — you think the phrase “boyishly handsome” might have been invented just for him. 

underneath the beanie, you can see a few tufts of dark hair, you can see dark brows that are just the right balance between bushy and neat, you can see friendly, heavy lidded coppery eyes and lashes that would not have been out of place in a mascara advert. the boy’s skin is warm brown, like earth, and dusted with dark freckles, like stars, or scattered seeds. 

(you decide the answer is a definite, resounding no.)

“it’s just, honestly, the whole last fortnight i’ve been coming here there hasn’t been anyone. didn’t think they used this part of the centre anymore, or i’d have gone somewhere else.”

he’s just sort of standing there, looking at you, and you’re looking at him too, and it takes you a second of looking at his unfairly, distressingly attractive face to realise he’s expecting you to say something.

what is he expecting, though? you have no idea. no fucking idea what to do in this situation. gone somewhere else for what? what the hell is he even doing, breaking into a fucking garden centre? 

are you supposed to kick him out? call your manager? call the fucking police? no fucking idea. 

“they didn’t,” you answer, the words feel very sudden, kind of stilted, kind of like they’re jumping up out of your mouth on their own without your say-so. why is that what you’re saying? why are you giving him answers — shouldn’t it _be excuse me but what the fuck are you doing here right now, you weirdly beautiful fucking stranger?_ “they’ve just cleared it out again. f- fixed the lights and- stuff.”

as you speak it doesn’t feel like you speaking. it doesn’t feel like you’re in control of the words. that’s probably something of a blessing, though, because you don’t know what you’d say if you were. and as you speak he just watches you, and his not too neat not too bushy eyebrows make their way fractionally higher up his face. 

“right,” he says, slowly like he’s talking to someone a bit stupid, but not unkindly. dragging out the i. r _iii_ ght. a few seconds of silence float by. “look, are you… going to make me leave? because i— well, i did come here for a reason. i mean, this isn’t just, like, what i do for fun.” 

and look at that, he’s answered your question without you even having to ask it. well, sort of. to an extent. not really enough of an extent, but the start of an extent, and enough to let you know that he’ll probably be willing to divulge the rest if you ask nicely. right? you hope so. 

“uh,” you say — is that all you can fucking say? _uh?_ really? — “no. i mean, no, you— don’t have to leave. it’s just me here anyway.” 

you realise as the words leave your mouth that you’ve just told a strange boy who is larger than you that you’re alone, in the dark, with no one to scream for help to should it turn out that he came here with the precise intention of murdering you. he doesn’t look like a murderer, though. not with eyes like those. not with a smile like that. 

then again, you’ve never met a murderer. you’ve no idea what a murderer’s smile might look like. 

that maybe-a-murderer’s smile lights up brighter when you tell him you don’t have to leave, and despite yourself, you feel faintly pleased. underneath the still lingering terror, that is. don’t forget the lingering fucking terror. but still, you can’t help but feel a little bit good about yourself for making such a warm smile glow warmer. doesn’t happen often ~~or even ever~~. 

another few seconds’ silence. is he waiting for you to say something else? you’re not sure. you’re not sure what else there would be to say. _yeah, strange beautiful boy i’ve never seen before in my life and whose motives are completely unknown to me, feel free to waltz right in and make yourself at home._

“well,” he says at last, decisively. there’s confidence in his voice, but gentleness too, a kind of quite self assuredness, the kind you’d envy, wish you could have for yourself but never quite worked out how to. “thank you.” 

silence. there’s always so much silence when people speak to you. your heart is still beating too fast, and you’re urging him to say something else, because god knows you can’t bring yourself to speak. 

“look,” he says, and he takes a step or two closer, and leans down slightly, and there’s a hint of a sparkle in his brown-gold eyes. a hint of mischief. “i like to try to trust people until proven otherwise, yeah? and you look totally fuckin’ lost,” — _do i?_ you think _do i?_ you have no idea what you look like at all — “so, uh, i’ll show you what i’m doing here, right? in exchange for you not booting me out, or calling the fuzz, or whatever. sound like a deal?” 

sure, it sounds like a deal, especially seeing as you weren’t planning on booting him out or calling the fuzz in the first place. and of course you do _want_ to know what he’s doing there, too. you’re a curious sort of person by nature — not _actually_ a robot — you’re kind of dying to know, actually. just too busy being frightened and, yeah, _lost,_ and completely unable to wrap your head around the fact that this boy is actually here and not just some fever dream your over-tired brain has conjured up to dwell on it. 

curiosity did, after all, kill the cat. (you have always been very afraid of death.) 

“okay,” you say. you can hear how quiet your voice comes out. it’s not on purpose. frustrating, actually. 

more bright boy smiles. you feel as though this is the moment where you should start to relax. laugh, maybe, and say _yeah, sure, you weirdo, show me what you got._ something like that. you dearly wish you could. you wish for the hundred thousandth time in your short sad life that you could just be a little less afraid. 

“alright,” he says, and then he puts his hands into the pockets of his parka, spins on his heel, and strides off towards the back of the open air part of the area. for a split second you aren’t sure whether or not he intends you to follow, and you dither, like an idiot (coward), open your mouth like you might ask for confirmation. but you close it. you follow. you’ve found yourself in some weird young adult romance novel unlikely meeting situation for the first time ever, and probably the _only_ time ever, because, really, who does this happen to? 

this _doesn’t_ happen. this isn’t how _anyone_ meets people. 

you follow.

it’s fucking cold, away from what little vague warmth the fluorescent lights and dodgy electric heater provide in the sheltered area you were working in before he showed up. cold in a slow, creeping way, though, so at least you kind of have time to adjust. as you follow him you pull your jersey tighter, do the zip all the way up to the top so the collar bumps against your nose. 

the boy leads you past the stacks of compost bags and terracotta pots and weird lawn statues, past the wheelbarrows without wheels and other decommissioned equipment, past all the weird old shit that you will, presumably, clear out of this place over the course of your employment. you end up coming to a stop in front of another, fairly shitty, tin shed — this one is shabby, small and rusty and you wouldn’t have thought it had been touched in a fucking decade.

except that the padlock on the door is visibly quite new. still shiny silver; it hasn’t been rusted over yet. the boy puts his hand into the inside pocket of his parka, and takes out the key, and bends to unlock it.

this is starting to get incredibly fucking weird. or weird _er_ , maybe. you wonder if maybe he’s about to lead you into fucking narnia. that would be something of a trip, but probably not _the_ most bizarre thing that could happen. you are both in an otherwise empty garden centre in the night, in the dark. it seems like exactly the kind of moment for you to discover that one of the tin sheds hides another, secret world, and this strange beanie wearing boy is the only one with the key to enter it. 

he seems like the type. something in his eyes. in the short few minutes you looked into them (near them, eye contact has never been your forte) you felt like you were seeing something you’ve never quite seen before. some whole new kind of person, some unprecedented brand of boy, one who has magical powers and keeps them locked away in a fucking shed. 

that isn’t the case, though. of course it isn’t. what’s actually in the shed is kittens.


End file.
